The book was printed with 1,115 painstakingly produced color plates, including more than 100 shades of gray. Ridgway's, however, was the first to provide such a finely divided color categorization that also used words from natural language, which, he argued, despite their imprecision, were more useful to naturalists. Taxonomies of 100 to 400 color names had been published through the 19th century and more rigorous systems based on spectrum analysis or color-wheel placement had used symbols or numbers to represent exact combinations of color features (hue, tone, light, shade, etc.).

Ridgway's Color Standards and Color Nomenclature was not the first attempt to standardize colors.